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To pursue a goal which is by definition unattainable is to condemn oneself to a state of perpetual unhappiness.

Emile Durkheim

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Emile Durkheim
Age: 59 †
Born: 1858
Born: January 1
Died: 1917
Died: January 1
Anthropologist
Historian Of Religion
Philosopher
Professor
Sociologist
Troyes
Aube France
Emile Durkheim
State
Condemn
States
Unhappiness
Perpetual
Definition
Definitions
Pursue
Oneself
Goal
Unattainable

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Faith is not uprooted by dialectic proof it must already be deeply shaken by other causes to be unable to withstand the shock of argument.
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The first and most basic rule is to consider social facts as things.
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Science cannot describe individuals, but only types. If human societies cannot be classified, they must remain inaccessible to scientific description.
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The man whose whole activity is diverted to inner meditation becomes insensible to all his surroundings.
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There is no society known where a more or less developed criminality is not found under different forms. No people exists whose morality is not daily infringed upon. We must therefore call crime necessary and declare that it cannot be non-existent, that the fundamental conditions of social organization, as they are understood, logically imply it.
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Each new generation is reared by its predecessor the latter must therefore improve in order to improve its successor. The movement is circular.
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The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average members of a society forms a determinate system with a life of its own. It can be termed the collective or creative consciousness.
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Our whole social environment seems to us to be filled with forces which really exist only in our own minds.
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At first sight, one does not see what relations there can be between religion and logic.
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One does not advance when one walks toward no goal, or - which is the same thing - when his goal is infinity.
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The roles of art, morality, religion, political faith, science itself are not to repair organic exhaustion nor to provide sound functioning of the organs. All this supraphysical life is built and expanded not because of the demands of the cosmic environment but because of the demands of the social environment.
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When morals are sufficient, law is unnecessary when morals are insufficient, law is unenforceable.
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It is science, and not religion, which has taught men that things are complex and difficult to understand.
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When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary. When mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable.
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Man is only a moral being because he lives in society, since morality consists in solidarity with the group, and varies according to that solidarity. Cause all social life to vanish, and moral life would vanish at the same time, having no object to cling to.
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Too cheerful a morality is a loose morality it is appropriate only to decadent peoples and is found only among them.
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Man is a moral being, only because he lives in society. Let all social life disappear and morality will disappear with it.
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Socialism is not a science, a sociology in miniature: it is a cry of pain.
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Melancholy suicide. - This is connected with a general state of extreme depression and exaggerated sadness, causing the patient no longer to realize sanely the bonds which connect him with people and things about him. Pleasures no longer attract.
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An act cannot be defined by the end sought by the actor, for an identical system of behaviour may be adjustable to too many different ends without altering its nature.
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